In Louisville, Kentucky, an elementary school’s path to become a Spanish-immersion magnet school helped create an award-winning program that raised awareness of the Hispanic/Latinx community and fostered the cultural competence and unity of all students by asking: What unites us?
Students in Spanish-immersion magnet schools are primarily taught subjects like math and science in Spanish, with a goal of developing early proficiency in more than one language. To transition to that model, Hawthorne Elementary School created the Growing Readers, Growing Leaders. Using the Guided Inquiry Design framework, which cultivates an environment where learning is guided by students’ own questions and curiosity, the program led students through an eight-stage process to embrace and inform the school’s change.
Student input was key to helping Hawthorne Elementary School determine how it could develop an impactful program.
Students identified strengths and areas for improvement in the school and interviewed key stakeholders like Hispanic/Latinx teachers, staff, and parents to find commonalities in their life experiences. Recordings of the interviews and posters illustrating common themes were displayed during the school’s Hispanic Heritage celebration.
Using their findings, students identified the commonalities and discovered stories of inequity. They found that nearly 200 students in the school didn’t have access to books at home. In response, the students developed a proposal to community leaders asking to purchase 15 books for the students identified.
The program helped a community in need, but it is also helping to forge compassionate future leaders.
“Programs like this are important because [they give] our student population the opportunity for advocacy,” says Ashleigh Glickley, an academic coach at Jefferson County (Ky.) Public Schools. “It empowered our students to identify a need within our school community and act upon that need by helping others.”
Jamey Herdelin, school librarian at Hawthorne Elementary School when the program was developed, expanded on that thought.
“The program engaged students in reflecting on how to make our Spanish Immersion program not just a place where students learn another language, but also a school that unites amidst our commonalities and differences to support each other in overcoming challenges that impact student learning,” said Herdelin.
The program’s beginnings can be traced back to the school library.
“One of our parents, a Spanish speaker, was looking for English books,” Hawthorne Elementary School principal Becca Haynes says. “It identified a need for bilingual books in our library that parents can use to support their students at home. We saw that a lot of our students might not have access to those books, especially in the summertime.”
The success of Growing Readers, Growing Leaders led Hawthorne Elementary School to receive the prestigious Sara Jaffarian School Library Program Award for Exemplary Humanities Programming from the American Library Association (ALA) in 2023. The honor recognizes excellence in humanities programming in libraries that serve children in grades K-12. The $5,000 prize, presented annually by the ALA Public Programs Office, is sponsored by ALA’s Cultural Communities Fund in cooperation with the American Association of School Librarians.
The program’s long-term impact, Haynes says, is in providing more opportunities for students to read with their families at home. From that, she explains, school faculty has been able to develop and maintain stronger connections with its multilingual learners. Additionally, the school hosts monthly family nights, which include activities related to Hispanic culture, like preparing tortillas, alongside literacy components.
Since being awarded national magnet status, the school has seen a significant uptick in student enrollment, according to Haynes. This year, with just 72 seats available for its kindergarten class, the school received more than 160 applications.
Haynes notes that, while the program began with a focus on reading, “we’re (now) looking at other ways that families can engage in their students’ education.”
Key to that, Haynes says, is “the component of how important literacy is and access to literacy in different capacities.”
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Bill Furbee is a writer living in Kentucky.
Feature image: Ashleigh Glickley and Hawthorne Elementary School students brainstorm ideas for the Growing Readers, Growing Leaders program. Courtesy of Hawthorne Elementary School.
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